DES MOINES - Pheasant hunting has gone to the dogs in Iowa, and that's a good thing.
A parade Friday of bird dogs - ranging from goofy puppies to gray-whiskered hunting veterans - kicked off Pheasants Forever's National Pheasant Fest.
It's a three-day show more about protecting the environment and preserving and expanding wildlife habitat than shooting ring-necked pheasants.
“Pheasant Fest is our line in the sand,'' said John Linquist of Sibley, Pheasants Forever's western Iowa representative. “In my lifetime, Iowa's pheasant numbers have never been lower. Weather has played a role in that, but the loss of habitat has been critical. Pheasant Fest will begin helping us put some of those acres back on the Iowa landscape.''
Pheasants Forever, a wildlife habitat organization based in St. Paul, Minn., discovered three years ago that one of the best ways to draw a crowd and spread a conservation message was with the help of bird dogs, especially a parade of sporting dogs. More than 1,200 people crowded into the lobby of the Iowa Events Center to witness about 70 dogs representing more than 35 sporting breeds parade into the arena to open Pheasant Fest.There were long hairs and shorthairs. There were tall ones, short ones, skinny ones, but no fat ones. These are hunting dogs, after all.
“It's always the most popular attraction of the show,'' said Bob St. Pierre, a Pheasants Forever spokesman.
Organizers hope to draw 30,000 people to the show, setting a challenge for Omaha to match when Pheasant Fest returns to the Qwest Center Omaha next January. The show was last in Omaha in 2005.
Traditional pointers and retrievers were joined in the parade by dogs from many unusual breeds. There were Labradors, shorthairs and Brittanys, but then came Deutsch langhaars, blue Picardy spaniels, spinone Italianos, viszlas and wirehaired pointing griffons.
“Blue Picardy spaniel? Is that a mixed drink? The spinone Italiano sounds like a flavored gelato,'' St. Pierre said. “But no, they're bird dogs.''
St. Pierre said the reason that nearly all bird hunters who own dogs enjoy hunting is watching the dog work a field. “The relationship a bird hunterhas with that dog, it doesn't exist in deer hunting or fishing,'' he said. “It's the partnership between man and a canine that is almost completely unique to bird hunting.''
About 400 vendors catering to upland hunters, sport dog owners and wildlife habitat conservationists formed the core of the trade show. It also includes seminars and family events with everything from art to shotguns and tractors to puppies.
The show was last in Des Moines in 2007. It returned this year to focus attention on Iowa's plummeting pheasant population. In the past three years, Iowa lost more than 389,000 acres of grassland to crop production as landowners opted out of a federal program that paid them not to grow crops on marginal land. Hundreds of thousands more acres are set to come out of the program in coming years.
The loss of these acres, coupled with a series of wet, cold springs and harsh winters, have been tough on Iowa wildlife, said Howard Vincent, Pheasants Forever president.
Hunters bagged a record low 383,000 pheasant roosters in 2008.
Not all news from the field is grim, however. Pheasants Forever chapters have completed habitat programs on 1 million acres in Iowa since 1984.
Tom Fuller of Oxford, the group's eastern Iowa representative, said he hoped the organization would accomplish the next million acres in a shorter time.
A new Pheasants Forever program called Reload Iowa aims to bring pheasant numbers and upland hunting back to their glory days by adding biologists across the state to do a better job of helping landowners adopt conservation programs.
Pheasant Fest continues through Sunday. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a former Iowa governor, is scheduled to speak at the show today
